Trump's government denying passports to some Americans born near U.S.-Mexico border: WaPo

Follow Us

They served in the Army, Border Patrol and as police. They have legitimate U.S. birth certificates. But Trump's government is denying their passport applications and telling them they aren't U.S. citizens.

A Washington Post report out today tells of the “growing number of people whose official birth records show they were born in the United States but who are now being denied passports — their citizenship suddenly thrown into question,” under the Trump administration's racist policies.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, of (mostly Latinx) people who live and work along the U.S.-Mexico border are accused by Trump's government of “using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown on their citizenship.”

In a statement, the State Department said that it “has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications,” adding that “the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.”

But cases identified by The Washington Post and interviews with immigration attorneys suggest a dramatic shift in both passport issuance and immigration enforcement.

Gosh, who could have ever expected this from the candidate who pushed a fake conspiracy about a Black President not being a true American citizen? It's almost like only white people are real Americans, you guys.

In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States. As the Trump administration attempts to reduce both legal and illegal immigration, the government’s treatment of passport applicants in South Texas shows how U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.

Juan said he was infuriated by the government’s response. “I served my country. I fought for my country,” he said, speaking on the condition that his last name not be used so that he wouldn’t be targeted by immigration enforcement.

The government alleges that from the 1950s through the 1990s, some midwives and physicians along the Texas-Mexico border provided U.S. birth certificates to babies who were actually born in Mexico. In a series of federal court cases in the 1990s, several birth attendants admitted to providing fraudulent documents.

Based on those suspicions, the State Department during George W. Bush and Barack Obama’s administrations denied passports to people who were delivered by midwives in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. The use of midwives is a long-standing tradition in the region, in part because of the cost of hospital care.

The excuse they're using for this has to do with an earlier period of history, but that long-ago adjudicated dispute affected a relatively limited population. Passport denials over the matter were considered a thing in the past. Until Trump.

PHOTO: Shutterstock. TX AG Ken Paxton, shown here, is leading nationwide probe into Google. The Texas attorney general today issued a 29-page civil investigative demand with more than 200 directives for Google to provide detailed information on its ad business. The deadline is October 9.

Having managed to be so vile as to be kicked off Twitter, a darling of the white supremacy market complains about how hard it is to be him. Vice: The provocateur made no mention of the harassment that landed him in social media jail. Nor did he touch on being forced out of Breitbart the […]

Any list of great video game soundtrack list that does not include THPS is bunk. Tony Hawk is measurably one of the coolest people to ever walk the Earth and this soundtrack wins. Halo and the Gregorian chant thing. Chills. Halo 3 might be better, tho. Space Harrier. Meant to be played at a motion-enhanced […]

The field of data analytics can get intimidating, even for business professionals who constantly rely on it. But at its heart, its purpose is to simplify. To take mounds of information and distill their insights into a single clear picture. Currently, the go-to software for painting that picture is Tableau. And if you want to […]

If you’re in the market for a stable, durable camera fully suited for first-person video, there’s a good chance that you’re the adventurous type. So why settle on a familiar name like GoPro? The DJI Osmo Action 4K HDR Camera checks off all the same boxes on the action cam checklist as the GoPro 4K […]

The market for web developers is wide open these days. If only we could say the same about the pathway to that career. If you’re not already an experienced coder, it can be difficult to get things rolling. A four-year college degree or technical school? Sure, if you’ve got the money. What about web tutorials? […]